


It Always Rains at a Funeral

by offwhxte



Series: Religiously Unaffiliated [3]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Funeral, M/M, Military Funeral, Protective Hotch, Sassy Reid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 04:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11982384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offwhxte/pseuds/offwhxte
Summary: Spencer finds himself in a jam when he has to go to a funeral in a church and worries about what his reaction might be. Aaron pushes him in the right direction.





	It Always Rains at a Funeral

They'd lived together for months. Jack was beginning to warm up to the idea of having two dads (and a mom on weekends), and every day that Spencer woke the boy up to pancakes in bed or helped him study his vocabulary they grew closer. Things were routine enough that hardly any element of their daily lives was anywhere near a surprise. Yet, somehow, the sound that Spencer's bag made when it hit the table startled Aaron into looking up from his work. 

"How was your day?" He made a face as he saw the distance between Spencer and his bag. It was surprising anything hadn't fallen out of it after being thrown that distance.

Spencer gave him a fleeting look, tapping his fingers against his legs as he stood stiffly in the doorway of the living room, "My cousin died."

Aaron's confused smirk died on his lips, "What?"

"Killed himself. I should go to the funeral. Do you have any suits that would fit me?" Spencer gave him one of his distant and panicked smiles before disappearing down the hallway. 

"Woah! Honey, wait a second." Aaron stood up, not even making a move to walk after him because, right on cue, Spencer was backing himself into the doorway again. "I need you to explain."

"My aunt called me on the way to work, told me an address, she was crying. I looked up the address, it's a church, they have a service for a fallen soldier on the same date at the same time, and the obituary includes a paragraph about PTSD," Spencer scrubbed a hand over his face, "I've had an entire day to think about this, Aaron. Mom would usually go, but she's hospitalized and if she went to the funeral, she'd have an episode before we ducked under the first line of flags."

Aaron gave him a doubtful look, "You don't need to go if you don't want to."

"I do," Spencer said quietly. "I just worry."

"Worry?"

The young doctor let out a long sigh and crossed the room. He wrapped his arms around Aaron's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. Aaron took no hesitation in returning the embrace.

"They might pray for him, but there won't be an overwhelming amount of religion crammed down your throat," Aaron said, petting Spencer's hair. 

"I'm not worried about  _that_ ," Spencer mumbled, "I've read the Bible cover to cover, I can handle listening to a few stories and prayers."

"Then what is it?"

"What if I don't cry?" Came the quiet voice against his neck.

"What do you mean?"

"It's been eleven hours and twenty-nine minutes. I haven't cried yet."

Aaron pulled back and looked at Spencer with an eyebrow raised, "Okay?"

"I should cry, right? That's..." Spencer paused, "Stop looking at me like that."

"I don't think you need to worry about being a sociopath or an emotionless husk."

"I know I'm not a sociopath, I just..." Spencer's eyes fluttered closed and he cleared his throat, "Three hours in a church, wedged in between aunts and uncles that I haven't talked to or beared any mind to in years. I'm probably going to be focusing on the scientific improbabilities, and as soon as the pastor blames his state of mind on demons I'm going to have a physical response."

"You're thinking about this too much."

"Of course I am. What else would I be doing?" Spencer snipped before shaking his head, "Sorry."

"It's okay," Aaron smiled, rubbing gentle circles on Spencer's back. 

"I might go to the reception," the brunette said after a silence, "Try to reconnect."

"You can see if you feel up to it."

Spencer nodded. He chewed on his lip, "Will you go with me?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Aaron kissed his cheek. "Let's see if we have any funeral clothes that'll fit you. I don't know if a cardigan is the best way to go, this time."

Twenty hours later, Reid was shifting in the passenger seat of Aaron's car. He fiddled with the buttons on his cuffs and crossed his legs this way and that. The ceremony didn't start until eleven, but he knew that the family was most likely congregating in another room.

"You don't have to go in," Aaron repeated the mantra he'd been chanting the entire ride down.

"I don't have to, but I feel like my guilty conscience would strangle me if we started driving home now," Spencer reached over and gripped the handle of the car door before turning and looking at his partner, "Do you think it'd storm if I held your hand inside?"

"I think we can bring an umbrella just in case." Aaron pointed out the black umbrella stuffed into the side pocket and Spencer hurriedly wrapped his fingers around it. "If you don't cry, you don't cry. People process emotions differently, you know this."

"Doesn't mean it doesn't feel wrong," Spencer muttered. He pushed the door open and shuffled around the car. They linked arms and before Aaron could make a joke about  _no lightning bolts_ , a few light drops of water hit their cheeks.

"Coincidence," Aaron quickly said before Spencer could panic. "Merely a coincidence. People say it always rains at a funeral, right?"

"That's ridiculous," Spencer said, eyeing the growing dark patches on the sidewalk as they sauntered around the brick building. The pants he'd chosen were a bit too long for him and the hems kept catching on the heels of his sneakers as he walked. Aaron traced the lines of his suit jacket sleeve as they walked up the stairs, ducking under flags and sending sympathetic smiles to the men in uniform standing in lines down the hall. Spencer placed the umbrella underneath a table hidden in a corner right before they entered the main prayer room. 

"Are you family?" A woman piped up behind him. 

Spencer turned, unlinking his arm from Aaron's in order to turn and regard her. She had a beehive hairdo that curled at the ends and she looked like she walked straight out of an old Hitchcock movie. 

"Yes," he said plainly. He felt as though he should save his words for his emergence into the room where the people he used to visit on the holidays would be, where their eyes would widen then squint then widen again upon staring at him long enough. 

"Follow me."

Down a stairwell and through a couple ratty chandeliers, a family reunion was happening, swathed in black, gray and blue and covered in a muffled blanket of quiet apologies and sniffled anecdotes.

"You okay?"

Spencer blinked and turned to look at Aaron, who was lingering on the last step with a hand resting on the railing. 

"Fine."

"They haven't seen you yet. We can leave."

"Do you want to leave?" Spencer asked, his voice almost filled with hope. 

"I don't know anyone here but you. I don't know the person in the casket. I'm here for you, and if you don't want to be here, I don't mind leaving," Aaron stepped down to floor level, "But I do think it's worth staying. For memories."

Spencer thought about asking why he'd want the memories of a funeral, but he knew why. Sentimental value meant something, no matter who that value was shared with. "Okay."

Before Aaron could commend him on his amazing decision making, an older woman in a black and gray dress that stopped at the knee sashayed through a doorway and laid eyes on the skinny body in the hallway. Aaron gave the brunette a look, and the doctor spun around.

"Spencer."

“Yes,” Spencer agreed.

“You’ve grown, certainly.”

“Yes,” he said again. He was searching his brain for the face, perhaps twenty years younger and wrinkleless. He couldn’t think of anything.

“You probably don’t remember me,” she said cautiously. She kept looking over Spencer’s shoulder and when he felt the hand wrap around his own, he figured she must have been intimidated by Aaron’s presence. He was a quite intimidating person when he was confused. “I used to care for you when you were a baby.”

“I don’t remember that,” Spencer replied, admittedly embarrassed by his lack of total knowledge. They stared at each other for a while. Spencer felt Aaron squeeze his hand and he mumbled a  _my_ _condolences_ before he dragged the older man further down the hallway, zig-zagging through the crowd of people. 

They found solace in the choral room. Four rows of stiff chairs angled toward an old, cracked chalkboard with remnants of past religious songs. Spencer lowered himself into one of the front chairs. Aaron sat beside him and took his hand

Aunts and uncles stared at him. Younger cousins would shuffle over every so often and ask who he was, while the older ones were probably still steaming over the time he had gotten fed up with their teasing and built a Rube Goldberg machine in their bedrooms on Christmas Eve. It had made a mess, he didn't blame them. 

"Spencer William Reid, as I live and breathe."

Aaron noticed Spencer tense at the voice and switched into his protective mode faster than he could blink. He squeezed the slender hand between his fingers as a tall, older lady appeared through the mumbling crowd. She wore her hair much like Diana did, Aaron noticed, though she bared no resemblance.

"Hello," the brunette said grimly. Aaron looked over at him worriedly. 

"I see you haven't changed a bit," the woman spat. She was glaring at their intertwined hands.

"In many ways, but not the way you might have wanted me to," Spencer offered. He held Aaron's hand up as a trophy. 

Spencer sent a glance to Aaron. It only lasted a moment, but it offered a silent  _do you see why I didn't want to come?_ Aaron replied with a blink.  _Who is she?_

"My estranged aunt," Spencer said with his mouth before turning and smiling at the woman who was obviously confused, "Same-sex couples communicate via telepathic receiver given to us very graciously by our one true Lord and Savior, Satan."

The old woman almost looked offended but she tightened her face up just before Spencer's smirk became apparent on his face, "This is a funeral, Spencer."

"So act like it," Spencer agreed. 

Before the hag could open her mouth again, a man entered the room with a goatee and a suit that was a size too big for him. Spencer kept his eyes on his aunt as she shuffled back a row or two to make some distance between herself and her apparently Satan-worshipping nephew.

"My name is Pastor Borrin. I want to begin by saying I am so... so sorry for your loss. From what I hear he was a great man."

Spencer rolled his eyes. He tugged on Aaron's sleeve and gave him a look of disbelief, to which he was given a playful eyebrow raise. 

The pastor talked for way too long. He talked about things the family had told him, things about his smile and his service for the country. Things you could Google on any given Sunday. It pressed every single one of Spencer's buttons, but he just gnawed on his lip and listened. 

A lady had followed the pastor into the room. She stood behind him with her clipboard and church brochures, waiting until his half-assed apologies were up so that she could tell the family to line up in order to begin the ceremony.

The stairwell was cramped. Spencer was one step down from Aaron and he traced words into the back of his suit jacket. He heard the mumbling of patrons in the large room to their right. Just a few seconds and they would walk out into what was supposedly a full house, and Spencer would sit and get the closure he knew he needed.

The doors swung open. Spencer clutched to Aaron's coattails, wondering what would happen if he just ran down the aisle and to the car and waited for his man before speeding off and never looking back. Light and cold air flooded the suffocated room and the distant sound of sad music playing over shitty speakers and everything became real. 

Aaron glanced over at Spencer after all was done, as two people who stood beside him during the war stood over him and folded two flags. One for his mother, one for his father. Spencer wasn't crying, but he was close. His eyes were red and his breathing was uneven. Aaron patted his leg gently. 

Spencer didn't stay around for the receiving line. He stayed long enough to watch every single person in the church stand and fall into a line, wrapping around the inside of the church nearly three times. Aaron wrapped an arm around Spencer's back before turning to leave. 

"Thank you for coming," they heard the voice of the aunt from earlier. 

Neither of them regarded her. Spencer kissed Aaron's shoulder, however, before they turned the corner and both ran to the car with equal abandon.

"Thank you for making me stay there," Spencer said, later, as he shed the suit jacket and tie, throwing them onto the chair in the corner that they always threw their clothes on. "It wasn't the best experience, but I don't have anything to feel guilty for."

"What about the religious stuff?" Aaron asked over his shoulder, undoing the buttons of his dress shirt, "I saw you tense when they started talking about PTSD."

"You know I disagree with the idea that PTSD is the work of demons. Literal demons, mind you," Spencer turned and leaned on the dresser. "I won't be going back to a church anytime soon."

"I understand," Aaron nodded and turned to him as well. "I did find that pastor to be pretty dramatic."

"Yes," Spencer laughed. "Theatric."

"I'm proud of you."

"Me too," the brunette admitted, shrugging. "I don't want to think about it anymore, though."

"Also understandable," Aaron smiled his dad-smile before grabbing a t-shirt and pulling it on. "We can pick Jack up from Jessica's house? Movie night? Sound good to you?"

"Sounds amazing."


End file.
